In the manufacture of gloves, such as surgical gloves, a polymer latex coating may be applied to a glove mold as an inner and outer layer on a rubber elastomer layer. This provides a surgical glove with a slip coating so that the surgeon no longer needs to use powder in order to put on the glove. A substantial difficulty has arisen, however, in the use of a dip molding process to form gloves of this type. It has been fond that the polymer latex tends to form webs between the fingers. Although these liquid webs subsequently break, the contents of the web are deposited on the medial and lateral aspects of the finger. This results in a heavy deposition of the suspended polymer on these areas. As a result of this heavy deposition, the polymer latex may flake off when the rubber glove is expanded. Such flaking makes the glove unsuitable for use as an aparticulate surgical glove.
In order to prevent the formation of webs during glove molding, it has been disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,246,339 (Sinn et al.) that the formation of these webbed fingers can be prevented by the addition of oil emulsions or fat emulsions to the latices. In order to prevent webs between the fingers, it has also been disclosed in the prior art to form the fingers of non-rounded, non-horizontal inclined surfaces which join at an apex and define an included angle therebetween. An apparatus for achieving this is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,340,348 (Kurtz).